Our bet on decentralized exchanges

Back when we started Aragon in 2016, decentralized exchanges on Ethereum were a dream, just like DAOs. Now, both are realities.

Decentralized exchanges have changed the rules of the game. Now you can exchange assets programmatically and with minimal friction.

Before decentralized exchanges and before Aragon Agent, you had to withdraw assets from a DAO, deposit them on a centralized exchanges, make the trades and deposit them back in order to perform a trade.

Today, an Aragon DAO can use Aragon Agent to programmatically and trustlessly exchange assets. And that’s why decentralized exchanges are so powerful — they allow us to do things we couldn’t do before.

Aragon is now entering a new phase, since the first service of the Aragon Network is about to launch — ANJ pre-activation is now live ahead of the full Aragon Court launch on Fight for Freedom Day, Feb 10th.

Because of this imminent launch, more people will need to get their hands on ANT. ANT is both needed to acquire ANJ in order to become a juror, and will also be needed for protocol governance and tuning network parameters.

But today it’s hard to acquire ANT. Liquidity is low, as we have heard from many potential users and partners and their struggle to acquire ANT. Since the security of Aragon Court depends directly on ANT’s network value, it’s important for the latter to grow.

Today, we are announcing a couple of measures that will make it easier to acquire ANT.

ANT is already listed on Uniswap, but we also have news on that front: We have become a liquidity provider on both Kyber and Uniswap.

It feels so natural to bet on decentralized exchanges, since it’s what Aragon DAOs can use today — after all, a DAO needs to interact with smart contracts.

A showcase of the power of DAOs and DEXs together is how we became liquidity providers on Uniswap. The Budget DAO, a DAO used to allocate funds for development of the project, injected liquidity itself. Check out the vote on Ethereum.

We have also kickstarted providing liquidity on centralized exchanges where ANT is listed.

We will closely watch how liquidity across those platforms evolves. We hope it becomes easier for newcomers to join the Aragon Network, participate in its governance, or become a juror and help resolve disputes.